


who'd have known

by milominderbinder



Series: maia's shameless fic a day in the month of may [9]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Acceptance, Family Feels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:07:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1596035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milominderbinder/pseuds/milominderbinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few days after everything - after Mickey comes out to his dad and a bar full of people, after the fight, after Terry gets hauled back to jail - Mickey and Ian are walking home from the Alibi, wrapped around each other and <i>happy</i>.</p><p>And then they bump into Iggy and Tony.  Mickey's immediately ready for a fight - but as it turns out, his brothers might be less like their dad than Mickey had thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who'd have known

The stars are hardly even visible through the bright Chicago lights, but as Mickey steps out of the Alibi, he notices one blinking up above his head.  It must be an especially bright one, and that thought makes him smile a little despite himself, as he stands on the curb and waits for Ian, who is just a few seconds behind him.

Ian’s still shrugging on his jacket when he emerges from the Alibi a moment later.  He looks frustrated, because he’s managed to get the collar all twisted up; Mickey reaches over and smoothes it out against the back of Ian’s neck.

Ian shoots him a grin, and Mickey grins back, because he can actually _do_ shit like this now.  It’s late at night, and the only people around them are pretty much the drunks stumbling out of the Alibi who couldn’t care less, but still.  Mickey can touch Ian casually, can smile at him and not have to worry about someone getting the wrong impression, even in broad daylight, in a crowd, in a room full of his own fucking _family._ While it’s far from perfect, Mickey’s enjoying being out.  And _there’s_ something he never thought he’d say.

They’ve been at the bar most of the night, but now it’s time to head back to the Gallagher’s house.  Ian sets off at a brisk pace, presumably to combat the cold of the night, and Mickey hurries after him, can’t resist snagging him around the middle and nudging his ribs.

“Ah, ow, fuck you,” Ian says, but he’s laughing between his teeth as he clutches at his side.

It’s only been four days since the fight at the bar, and Mickey and Ian are both still in pretty bad shape.  Mickey has a split lip and a black eye and a deep cut on his forehead that’s not yet properly scabbed over, and Ian’s chest is covered in bruises, his ribs still giving him pain whenever he breathes too deep or bends over.  But, really, Mickey thinks all their injuries are kind of a small price to pay.  It could have been so, so much fucking worse.  They’re _alive,_ which is more than he was expecting, so he can deal with a few cuts and bruises.

As soon as he thinks that he quits jabbing Ian, and instead, wraps just one of his arms gently around Ian’s hips.  For a moment, he’s strangely and inexplicably nervous - after all this time, it still seems freaking _crazy_ to Mickey that Ian wants him, he has this eternal feeling of waiting for the other giant fucking shoe to drop and knock him out of play altogether.  But right now Ian just wraps his own arm around Mickey’s shoulders, and laughs under his breath.  Mickey decides he might have a while left before shoe-dropping season.

It suddenly seems much warmer when he’s wrapped around Ian, and Mickey slows his pace a little, enjoying the walk.  The Alibi’s hardly far from Ian’s place, but they’re not in any real hurry, and it’s kinda nice, just strolling along.  Mickey pushes himself a little closer into Ian’s side.  Ian smells like cigarette smoke and mint and sweat; Mickey could sit there and inhale that fucking smell all day.

He tucks his thumb into Ian’s beltloop as they turn a corner, nearly at Ian’s place now.

And find themselves face to face with Tony and Iggy.

\--

For a moment, Mickey feels like he can’t breathe.

When he’d thought about his sexuality in relation to his family before, it had always, really, been two ends of the extreme.  It had been _Mandy,_ who he knew would be cool with it but who he couldn’t quite ever bring himself to tell anyway, and it had been _Terry,_ who had been the ultimate threat, the monster lurking outside Mickey’s comfortable closet, the nightmare Mickey haunted himself with.  He’d always had so, so much to be scared about from Terry, he’d never really gotten around to thinking about what his brothers would say.  He always figured that if anyone found out, Terry would kill him before he had a chance to worry about anyone else.  But in the back of his mind - well.  His brothers were all dumb shits who followed their dad around like he was some kind of _role model._ Mickey had never had any doubts that they’d be on Terry’s page.  And it’s been four days since the fight, and Iggy and Tony _must_ know what’s happened by now, there’s no physical way they couldn’t, half the fucking neighborhood is talking about it, even those who’ve never even _met_ Mickey.

So when he sees them, the first thing he does is tense every single muscle in his body, ready to fight.  He feels Ian’s arm go slack around his shoulders, but he keeps his grip tight on Ian’s hip, anchors himself there - Ian’s like his fucking _power source_ at this stage, and having his solid presence there is the only reason Mickey thinks he’ll have a _chance_ of getting out of this alive.

So they stand there, for a split second that seems to drag on forever, on a dark cold deserted street corner, a streetlamp flickering uselessly above their heads, sirens sounding in the distance, Mickey’s nails cutting into his palm as he makes a fist.  Looks at his two brothers, who seem to barely be in the process of realising who he _is,_ and wonders which one of them will make the first move.

As it turns out, it’s Iggy.  But it’s not the move Mickey had been expecting.

“Hey, man,” he says, nodding his head at Mickey, like _nothing_ unusual is going on.  Mickey blinks for a second, checks that he really _does_ still have his arm wrapped around Ian, that they are _unmistakably_ a couple.  “Hey, Gallagher, right?”

“Uh,” says Ian, sounding about as brainless as Mickey feels.  “Yeah.”

“Hey, didn’t you use to date Mands?” Tony says, a little too slowly, sounding as dumb as usual.  “Hah!  Can’t get enough of the Milkoviches, huh?”

“I never really dated Mandy,” Ian responds, on autopilot.  Mickey’s whole body is still thrumming for a fight, his weight it on the balls of his feet and his hand is clenched into a fist, and he doesn’t have a _clue_ what’s going on.

“Me and Ian are _together,_ guys,” he says.  He thinks they must know that, but at the same time they seem _not_ to, so it bears repeating.  “Like, in a super fucking gay way.  You _get_ that, right?”

Iggy looks at him like he’s crazy - which, coming from strung-up methhead troublemaker Iggy, is kind of a serious insult.

“Yeah, dude,” he says, and then gives a laugh which almost sounds like a _giggle,_ looking over to Tony.  “We heard about your show at the baptism.   _Man,_ I wish I could’a seen Dad’s face!”

Tony laughs too at that, slowly, like he does everything.

“You ain’t pissed?” Mickey checks.  He half unclenches his fist, but still isn’t totally convinced.  “I mean, I got Dad thrown back in jail already, and I’m gay as shit.  You’re not gonna like, kill me or whatever?”

“Are you _kidding?_ ” Iggy asks.  He takes a couple steps forwards and claps Mickey hard on the shoulder, grinning.  “Now we got the house to ourselves for another year!  Longer if he gets in shit in the joint.  You think we want him around, doing all our coke and beating our asses when we look at him the wrong way?  You did us a fuckin’ favour, man.”

Mickey kind of feels like his head’s gonna fall off.  He’d known his dad hit his brothers just as much as him, treated them just as much like shit as he treated Mickey, but still.  He’d always figured they liked him, for some fucked up reason, that they liked having him around.  They were dumb as fuck; he hadn’t ever thought too hard on the dumb fucking logic he assumed was swirling around their little brains to make them think Terry was somehow an asset to the world.

He wants to ask them more, ask them fucking _everything,_ possibly get them to narrate every single opinion they’ve had on Terry since they were three years old and why they never said any of it outloud, but before he can they’re pushing past him, walking away with a couple of matching waves.  
  
“Gotta go!” Tony calls back as they walk away.  “My girl’s working in this strip club, she’s gon’ get us in free.  Guessing you douchebags don’t wanna come?”

“You’re guessing right,” says Mickey, but they’re too far away to hear him by that point.

He stands on the street corner for a few long, long seconds, before Ian’s arm tugs on his shoulders, and they start walking again.

“I did _not_ see that one coming,” Ian says a moment later, in a way that would sound conversational to most, but Mickey can hear the hesitation behind his words.

“Me neither,” says Mickey, shaking his head.  “Shit.  Guess I underestimated the fuckers.”

Ian just _hmms_ in agreement, and they walk in silence for a few more moments, Mickey trying to collect his swirling thoughts.

A minute later, they’re at Ian’s house.  They stumble up the steps together, but before they can go inside, Ian suddenly pushes Mickey up against the door and kisses him, hard and crazy, pulling on Mickey’s hair and licking into his mouth, biting at his lips.  Mickey gives as good as he gets, twisting his fingers into Ian’s shirt and sighing into the touch.

When they break apart, Ian’s flushed and grinning like a maniac, his face oddly lit by the dim porch light.

“You’re pretty fucking great, Mick,” he says.  It feels like the thing they don’t say, the three words which will probably be the next step in their relationship, Mickey knows, the next thing he’s not quite ready for on time.

But in that moment, he’s happy to hear a veiled version of it.  He kisses Ian again, and thinks about how many people seem to just keep on surprising him.

**Author's Note:**

> for the fic a day in may challenge, and the prompt by an anon on tumblr: _ian and mickey are on a date (or just walking home together idk) and they meet one or two of mickey's brothers and mickey and ian thinks the milkovich's are going to beat the shit out of them but in the end they're actually okay with all the gay thing_
> 
> written late and posted late and unedited and terrible; go easy on me.
> 
> send me more prompts: [mickeymilk](http://mickeymilk.tumblr.com).


End file.
